When Google+ first came on the scene, many of us were unsure of whether the platform would truly take off. And, when you compare it to Facebook today, there really isn’t a comparison in terms of where the people are at. I, like many others in the publishing industry, failed to recognize the potential of the new platform for community engagement. I thought, “We already have Facebook, why do I need yet another outlet?”

In early December, Facebook announced changes to its algorithm for what shows up in your news feeds. Previously, when you liked a page, there was an assumption that you would like to see content from that page in your news feeds. I believe this still is true, even though we are all seeing less relevant content and more advertisements in our feed based on a new “pay to play” model of sharing content. Last year we could visit our News feed and see a wide variety of postings from the various pages we liked over time. Today, our feeds are almost exclusively confined to the postings of friends and posts PAID FOR by the pages you’ve liked — resulting in more commercial efforts at reaching you, and less relevant or interesting results.

Anyone who administers a page on Facebook has felt the effect of this throttling system and I’ve yet to find an outpouring of support for the changes from anyone on the various websites and forums I’ve visited discussing this issue. How can Facebook argue this is designed with the end-user in mind when they are essentially only going to show you advertisements from pages in your feed? Do you want more telemarketers on your phone lines, too? Have they done a survey on this at all? I’d love to see them ask people if they’d like the majority of page posts showing in their feeds to be advertisements for something. They won’t ask because they know the answer…

So, while I will be staying on Facebook with Sweeping Zen, and will continue posting as we have always done in the past, I am looking to build a community on Google+, as well. As of now they don’t charge people money for every single post they want people (who have chosen to get updates from you) to see. And, something tells me Facebook is going to have to rollback this mistake on their part. Part of the fun that has been Facebook has been the fact that there is so much engaging content available for us — it’s what has kept everyone glued to their website to begin with. With less of that content being discovered and shared, I think it will have a detrimental effect, overall. People will spend less time there when it’s no longer a place to get your news and information. It really kills any sense of a grassroots endeavor, and it is negatively impacting nonprofits.

So, I invite you to join our community on Google+ by following us there. I’m not going to be jumping ship and I’m not going to leave Facebook, but I am going to diversify the social media outlets utilized here as a result of this pay-to-play model of social media. I just can’t afford to pay for every post we share on Facebook to make sure the people who have liked our page can ultimately see it in the end. It’s just way too costly.

About Adam Kō Shin Tebbe

Adam Kō Shin Tebbe (Kō Shin meaning Shining Heart) is editor at Sweeping Zen and is a blogger for Huffington Post's Religion section, writing mainly on topics of interest to Zen practitioners. Before starting the website in 2009, Adam trained to be a chemical dependency counselor. Adam is currently working on a documentary on Zen in North America (titled Zen in America) with a projected release date of 2017.

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About Sweeping Zen

Established in 2009 as a grassroots initiative, Sweeping Zen is a digital archive of information on Zen Buddhism. Featuring in-depth interviews, an extensive database of biographies, news, articles, podcasts, teacher blogs, events, directories and more, this site is dedicated to offering the public a range of views in the sphere of Zen Buddhist thought. We are also endeavoring to continue creating lineage charts for all Western Zen lines, doing our own small part in advancing historical documentation on this fabulous import of an ancient tradition. Come on in with a tea or coffee. You're always bound to find something new.

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